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Why You Should Pitch Investors Again That Passed On You Before
“You’ve done everything you told us you were going to do,” the VC said.
“Incredible execution,” his partner said.
“We’re going to move forward very quickly on this,” the VC said.
The story was much different the last time I met with this group of investors.
“Brett, you and I have developed a bit of relationship over the past couple months, so I want to tell you what I have been hearing,” the same VC said two years before our second meeting.
“When we started doing reference calls on you (these are “backdoor” references, so you have no control over who they call), they were unusually bad. In fact, they were the worst I had ever seen, so I decided that I would personally start making calls.
“I couldn’t believe how poorly people think of you. So, my young friend, my conclusion is you are not very self-aware. We’ve developed a bit of a relationship over the past couple months, and you are a young man with a lot of career left. You can fix these things if you want.”
I was unnecessarily brutalized, in my opinion, in this meeting by the VC. But here I was two years later, hat in hand, asking them to invest in my company.
